Mahesh Paudyal
How are journeying and writing related? What is their classical or aesthetic connection? Perhaps, Bhisma Upreti has an answer:
When I had finished writing my emotions in the diary, an untold happiness graced me. After all, contentment is not a difficult thing. What one merely needs to do is ease one’s mentality. I closed both my diary and my eyes, after expressing my inconstancy and restlessness in the form of poetry. I realized and got ready to grab the extreme joy of the day’s journey. (chapter 3)
Journey, pre-history confirms, man has always been man’s life-project. It will perhaps be never verified when man started or stopped travelling. Travel, as Jolanta Sztachelka claims, “has remained a passion of mankind since its dawn.” (2). She theorizes man’s instinctive nature of nomadism in the following way, linking the nature first with instinct, and later with temptation created by literature of travel:
Some talk about instinct, some about atavism that we inherited from our nomadic ancestors, for whom to wander meant to survive. Others point at the cultural heritage in the form of myths, legends and the oldest epics, the Bible and the Odyssey with its heroes: Gilgamesh, Theseus, the Wandering Jew, Moses and Odysseus. And at this point I would often add those belonging to slightly later periods: Herodotus and Dante, the former as the founding father of all types of reporters, the latter as the most famous—since Orpheus—traveler to impossible worlds. (2)
Be it to the possible or the impossible world, no travel is, perhaps, purposeless. A purposeless travel is but absolute madness. A writer, traveling with a pen, paper or a typewriter has a purpose in mind, namely producing a fine piece of writing. Bhisma Upreti is not an exception. His travel has a decided goal:
On attaining something, man has the illusion of fulfillment, but soon, other dreams take shape and desires persist for ever. Propelled by such cravings, man roves through many a dale and mountain in life. This sense of lack is the pivot that drives man to pine for something new. In fact, pushed by such a craving, I was desirous of leaving Kathmandu Valley for Pokhara in search of a newness against the sense of lack that had been tickling me for long. (“The Outset”)
This ‘search for newness’ instantly pushes Upreti into a Freudian terrain—especially the theory of lack— whose purgation, for Upreti, comes about through traveling down the experiences. This idea is however, not new. Many, including scientists have acknowledged that travel can fulfill a lack, and sharpen one’s mind. Porter cites evolutionist Charles Darwin as saying: “It appears that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist than a journey in distant countries. It both sharpens, and partly allays that want and craving, which, as Sir J. Herschel remarks, a man experiences, although every corporeal sense be fully satisfied.” (qtd. in Porter 157).
If the theory of lack initiates a journey, it is the need for purgation that forces a writing. Most travel writers write to purge their experiences, which, if left unused, might sublimate like camphor, and be of use to none. Some of the best travel writers of the world have acknowledge this strong urge to write for purgation, to thaw a gnawing impulse creating by a travel or observation. One of them is Jon Krakauer, who wrote his account of climbing Mount Everest. He confesses this unsurpassable urge in his introduction to Into Thin Air:
Several authors and editors I respect counseled me not to write the book as quickly as I did; they urged me to wait two or three years and put some distance between me and the expedition in order to gain some crucial perspective. Their advice was sounds, but in the end I ignored it—mostly because what happened on the mountain was gnawing my guts out. I thought that writing the book might purge Everest from my life. (14)
Uptreti also notices similar gnawing of the sense of lack and need for purgation inside him. The idea of lack and purgation simultaneously asserts both strength and limitation of one’s writing; his strength being the fact that his travel has a strong need, namely purgation knotted to a purpose, while his limitation underscored by the fact that he should constantly invent ‘lacks’ that push him out of home if he were to produce any remarkable travel writing, and this is not always possible.
The question of strength and limitation, which is more of a theoretical nature, has always plagued travel writing across its long, historical terrain. The genre is more prone to scrutiny, because, a travel account has been, most often, associated with writing a guide book, and therefore, inferior to a serious literary writing. However, there are some critics, who place the genre midway between a guide book and a novel, thanks to its capacity to permeate between reality and fiction. For example, Debbie Lisle makes the following critical analysis of the genre: “[Travelogues] are understood as inferior to the novel, but more sophisticated than the travel guidebook. Travelogues will never achieve the status of the novel because the travel writer’s imagination is always handcuffed to the narration of brute facts.” Quoting Paul Fussell, she goes on to say:
This ‘non-fiction’ classification makes Fussell wonder how worthy travelogues are in terms of literary merit: ‘how serious artistically and intellectually can a travel book be? Is there not perhaps something in the genre that attracts second-rate talents?’ The specter of fiction looms large here; it is positioned as an ideal that the travelogue can never quite achieve. (30)
However, the debate no longer persists today. Travel account has been ranked much higher than a guidebook; it is recognized as one of the serious genres of literature the world over. Lisle accredits this to the flexible nature of the genre: “However, it is precisely the freedom to translate ‘brute facts’ through the strategies of fiction that makes travelogues better than guidebooks” (3).
There are inherent reasons why travel accounts, more advantageously than other pure non-fictional genres like biography writing and guide books, can cut across the liminal space between fiction and non-fiction. It is quite a flexible genre that connects imagination with geography, ecology, anthropology, cultural study, history, and so on. In fact, it is a “cocktail of ingredients” as James O’Reilly, Larry Habegger, and Sean O’Reilly claim:
For the travel book remains a vessel into which a wonderfully varied cocktail of ingredients can be poured: politics, archaeology, history, philosophy, art, or magic. You can cross-fertilize the genre with other literary forms: biography, or anthropological writing; or, more perhaps interesting still, following in Chatwin’s footsteps and muddying the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction by crossing the travel book with some of the wilder forms of the novel. (xxiv )
This, partly novel-like make, and partial engagement with facts is the strongest claim of travel literature today. The debate ‘fact or fiction?’ no longer holds good, as it is a settled question. It is both, as it has been most categorically settled for all times by Jan Borm. He says that travel writing “is not a literary genre but a variety of texts both predominantly fictional and non-fictional whose main theme is travel” (13).
There, however, is a fundamental question plaguing the entire genre, ever since it claimed itself as a serious literary genre: how much is travel writing a fact, and how much fiction? If it is more fact and less fiction, can a government collector or enumerator, trained in numbers, figures and graphs, produce a travel account? Does that result into a sellable book classed under ‘literature’? Of course not. A chronic vacillation over this question has but led to the production of a serious of weak travelogues in Nepali literature. In the type of travel writings I brand as ‘weak’, readers are forced to endure monotonous details in a news-like fashion, with nothing to fascinate at linguistic of imaginative level. The theory of travel writing today allows proliferation of the border between fact and fiction, and writers must utilize the license to produce palatable travel account.
This doubt—especially of the readers—about travel narratives, especially about its over-engagement with vulgar reality, is not a new one. There’s a section of Swift’s Gulliver Travel, where Gulliver airs this sense of monotony about travel books: “We were already overstocked with books of travels; that nothing could now pass which was not extraordinary; wherein I doubted some authors less consulted truth than their own vanity, or interest, or the diversion of ignorant readers” (161-62).
In order to scan how the most meritorious travel accounts have worked, it will be worthwhile to engage ourselves with a few touchstones of the history of this genre. The earliest travel accounts were accounts of war voyages like those of Odysseus, or religious trips like those described in Epic of Gilgamesh, the wanderings of Abraham in the Old Testament, and the journeyings of the Pandava in the Mahabharata and of the pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Along with them were travels accounts of discovery like those of Samuel Purchas, account of Li Po, Marco Polo, Hiuen Tsang, Ibn Jubayr, and Ibn Battuta. Much of travel literature through the middle ages is strewed with colonial motif, especially those under the genre classed today as ‘Grand Trip’. Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) outlines the colonial design in many of Europe’s travel literature across middle and early modern time.
However, in the post-colonization period—this is a theoretically debatable period, though we take it as period after Second World War for strategic essential purpose—travel literature no longer serves a colonial purpose. No much discovery and religious pilgrimage define our purposes of travel literature today. One of the biggest challenges at our hand, therefore, is to discover the ‘purpose’ of modern our travel writing. Modern travel writing, apparently has three thrusts: writing to discovers ways of life in a compare-and-contrast mode as done by people like Purchas and Huen Tsang, writing about nature, both apologetically from environmental perspective as done by Mary Austin and Terry Tempest Williams, and aesthetically as an advertisement, and writing to escape the mundane reality of modern life. First two thrusts give travel writing a cultural motif, and confirm the assertion that “travel is still popularly understood as the immersion in picturesque, distinct, colorful cultures” (Write of Passage 8).
The last mode, which is the most dominant one all over the world, can be termed “Don Juan Mode,” after Don Duan, the classic Byronian character, who traveled a lot to escape hardship, and to revitalize himself (Jolanta Sztachelska, 2010).
Whatever be the purpose of travel writing, it is imminent that the reader should be convinced about its merit. In fact, it is true for all genres, and with the advent of modern age where reader’s response is very vital, the case becomes even more important. Hans-Jurg Suter cites it as an interesting case for the importance of genre study as an academic tool: “The merits of a poem or a novel, the effectiveness of a news report or an instructional manual, will always be judged by their readers (or indeed analyzed by the literary scholar or the linguist) against a background of similar texts-the text type to which they belong” (31). The prime question, therefore, is not what the writer wants to say; it rather is what the reader is likely to gain from the writing.
What in fact is a reader likely to gain from a travel account? Like in case of fantasy, it is not enough to say, it is thrill. Nor is it enough to say, like in a book of geography or newspaper report, a reader gets ‘information’. But we are at extreme locations—of fiction and facts—when we are with a travel literature. About the utilitarian value of travel literature Debbie Lisle, has the following conviction:
The quasi-fictional genre of travel writing is at least as useful for understanding issues of international importance as the policy documents, government press releases, parliamentary debates and media stories that are usually privileged in this context. In fact, travelogues have a distinct advantage because they are read widely by a number of people, and thus provide valuable information about how artifacts of popular culture produce common assumptions about power relations at the international level. (1)
Debbie’s is, however, rather too-political an expectation. Travel writing has other functions, namely aesthetic and entertainment, as do other genres of literature. Andrew Hadfiled has a more comprehensive understanding of the role travel literature can play, in relation with readers:
Such representations increase our knowledge of other cultures, providing information which in some ways may prove useful, challenging, or, at worst diverting. Of course, undertaking the enterprise involves a series of reflections on one’s own identity and culture which will inevitably transform the writer concerned—and quite possibly the reader—and will call into question received assumptions, inducing a sense of wonder at the magnificence of the other, or reaffirming deeply felt differences with a vengeance. (1)
Where does Bhisma Uptreti stand, judged against all these parameters? This is perhaps be judged by the readers. One thing, however, is certain: his travelogue, though strewn with predictable facts, is bedecked by wonderful aesthetic details, and so, his writing is akin to poetry. At times, his writing brings in philosophy, and makes a sharp remark that is aphoristic in nature. For example, he says, “It doesn’t suffice for new trekkers to look for worn paths. We often have to walk creating and searching for new tracks” (chapter 1). Unlike many travel-account writers in Nepal, he holds a rare power to make symbolic and figurative explanations of facts, which would otherwise be overlooked as mundane. For instance, he muses on the destruction a river sometimes foists upon peaceful living: “Various Marsyangdis like this flow south daily in sorrow and get swallowed by giant monsters” (chapter 1). His comfort with figures of speech are mesmerizing, and the way he personifies—though it might sometimes be swept away as pathetic fallacy—qualifies to the rank of wonderful poetry: “It even seemed at places that the trail jumped into Marshyandi to mutilate itself” (chapter 1).
One of the persistent styles with Upreti—noticed ever since he published his first book of travel—has been his power to philosophize the ordinary and give it a grave interpretation, connecting with serious life-questions. His most dominant themes are hardship and existential musings, which we notice even in sights which might be easily overlooked by ordinary eyes. This, for instance, is a vindication:
We came to see a clean spring fall from the cliff into the Marsyandi River. What a swampy place it was, clean water spewing out of such a rocky hill! I came to feel an extreme excitement. Meanwhile, I had reasons to question the legitimacy of the existence of humanity at large: what has happened to us? Why are we growing merciless day by day? Why are we bent on mischief, anarchy and cruelty? (chapter 2)
Unlike the western existentialists who see no anchor in any spiritual foundation, Upreti—like a worthy child of Eastern Civilizations—discovers divine revelations in nature’s brilliant exposition. To him, the mountains and the difficulties they pose for human beings are nothing but spiritual invitations, leading to ecstatic attainment and untold bliss:
The matchless attraction and beauty of the pious and pristine sublimity make the human heart leap up and fly as does the white cloud under the blue firmament. In fact, it is beyond the interface of beauty and ecstasy that man attains Shivatva – the highest order or transcendence in Lord Shiva’s Being. That point where the Shivatva is attained perhaps forms the abode of Lord Shiva, and in fact, the abode of all gods for that matter. This was what I experienced, standing on the Thorang-la slopes, overwhelmed by the unparalleled charm of a pristine beauty. (chapter seven)
Less of a describer and more of a thinker, Upreti confirms his lack-drive and fear-drive at a number of times in his book. By lack-drive I mean the energy he derives to travel in order to compensate certain things the city life lacks. This fact is his own confession. As far as his fear-drive is concerned, he is constantly followed by a persistent fear of sliding time and approaching end—an existential fear conspicuously—and is therefore carried away, most of the time, not by the sublime brilliance of the sunrise, but by its doom to set in the evening. In other words, Upreti stations nature as a witness on the bank, and he flows south with the river towards an all-consuming sea called death:
The same thing happens in life as well. The second half comes to be less encouraging, less exciting, more exhausting, lonely and tiring. I had just crossed forty, a year ago. Time had come for me to prepare for the second half. The body chilled as I contemplated. However I thought, in the second half of my life, the gained skill, experience, obstacles and knowledge would prevent me from going into darkness, as I had learned by this journey, and it would help me to be better managed, balanced and capable of achieving more. Thinking this I was encouraged to accept and enjoy the second half of my life happily. (chapter 7)
With these merits, Upreti has carved for himself a different identity in the midst of travel writers purging out their impressions in writing. His biggest strengths, namely his capacity to philosophize the mundane and discover poetry is trifles makes him one of the finest travel writers in Nepal. However, he might do better by minimizing predictable factual details, and allow more fictional counterpart into factual description so that the reader is always left in a terrain of unpredictability.
References
Borm, Jan. “Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology.” Perspectives on Travel Writing. Ed. Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. 13-26.
Duncan, James and Derek Gregory. Write of Passage. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Fussell, Paul, (Ed). Abroad: British Literary Travelling between the Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Hadfield, Andrew. Literature, Travel and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Krakauer, Jon. Into Thin Air. New York: Anchor Books, , 1997.
Lisle, Debbie. The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
O’Reilly, James, Larry Habegger and Sean O’Reilly. The Best Travel Writings. Palo Alto: Solas House, Inc., 2010.
Porter, Demis. Hundred Journeys: Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.
Suter, Hans-Jurg. The Wedding Report. A Prototypical Approach to the Study of Traditional Text Type. Amsterdom and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1993.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travel. 1726. New York: Signet (reprint), 1960.
Sztachelska, Jolanta. “Introduction.” Metamorphoses of Travel Writing. Ed. Grzegorz Moroz and Jolanta Sztachelska. New Castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2010.